The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hearst CT’s series honored for exposing Boys & Girls Club abuses
BOSTON — The New England First Amendment Coalition will honor Hearst Connecticut Media with its 2020 Michael Donoghue Freedom of Information Award for its project on sexual abuse cases tied to Boys & Girls Clubs across the country, the organization announced Wednesday.
The FOI Award is presented annually to New England journalists who protect or advance the public’s right to know under federal or state law. A committee of First Amendment Coalition board members chooses the FOI Award recipient based solely on merit, the organization said in a release.
“The committee was very impressed with the work done for the Boys & Girls Club investigation and believed the series to be deserving of the honor,” said Justin Silverman, executive director of the coalition.
A team of seven journalists at Hearst Connecticut spent more than six months digging through 1,600 pages of public documents and filing more than 100 public record requests. They found more than 100 cases of abuse involving 280 victims in 31 states over the course of 70 years tied to Boys & Girls Clubs of America affiliates.
The Hearst staff used the documents it obtained to create a public database that allows parents sending a child to a local Boys & Girls Club to look up information about incidents and how they were handled by the organization.
“Having their work acknowledged in this way is a testament to the expertise and unwavering determination with which this team of adept journalists carried out this vitally important investigation,” said Wendy Metcalfe, VP of content and editor-in-chief for Hearst Connecticut. “Not only did they fight for the public’s right to know, they brought significant change on both a local and national level, which will have a long-lasting impact helping children.”
As a result of the reporting, Boys & Girls Clubs of America — which oversees 4,600 local affiliates — announced it will hire a third-party firm to review how it responds to complaints related to abuse and will provide additional safety training to its staff. Another youth organization also announced it would end all overnight visits between children and mentors as a result of Hearst Connecticut’s investigation into Boys & Girls Clubs.
“Local journalism can have big impact,” said Lisa Yanick Litwiller, the lead editor on the investigation. “We saw a need in our communities and across the country and we recognized our responsibility as journalists to shine a light on the issue wherever we found it. We are honored to be recognized for the intense, rewarding work of holding power to account.”
Hearst Connecticut staff members who worked on the project — Litwiller, Hannah Dellinger, Viktoria Sundqvist, Meghan Friedmann, Peter Yankowski, Humberto J. Rocha and Tatiana Flowers — will be honored Feb. 7 at NEFAC’s 10th annual awards luncheon at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. During the luncheon, A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, will also be honored with the Stephen Hamblett First Amendment
Award.
Previous recipients of the FOI Award are the Hartford Courant (2019); Todd Wallack of The Boston Globe (2018); The Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine (2017); Jenifer McKim of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (2016); James W. Foley (posthumously), the war correspondent and New Hampshire native killed by the Islamic State (2015); Brent Curtis of the Rutland Herald in Vermont (2014); and Don Stacom of the Hartford Courant (2013).